The concreteness effect and the bilingual lexicon: The impact of visual stimuli attachment on meaning recall of abstract L2 words

Abstract

According to the Dual-Coding Theory (Paivio & Desrochers, 1980), words that are associated with rich visual imagery are more easily learned than abstract words due to what is termed the concreteness effect (Altarriba & Bauer, 2004; de Groot, 1992, de Groot et al., 1994; ter Doest & Semin, 2005). The present study examined the effects of attaching visual imagery to abstract words through use of a meaning recall test. Eighty-seven American university students of first-year Spanish participated in the study. Participants were placed in either picture or non-picture groups and were given a treatment of 12 abstract and 12 concrete words. The treatment included three input phases lasting approximately 17 minutes. The posttest and delayed posttest involved a meaning recall test to measure receptive knowledge in which participants were supplied the L2 lexical item and asked to write the L1 translation. The results indicated that participants in the abstract picture group outperformed those in the abstract non-picture group on both posttest and delayed posttest; however, no such effect was found for concrete words. Findings suggest that meaning recall of abstract words can be facilitated by usage of metaphorical, emotive, or symbolic imagery.

Keywords

dual-coding theory abstract imagery system concreteness effect

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